


The Dream Team

by Biana_Delacroix



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Best detectives ever, F/M, Friendship, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:12:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2024721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Biana_Delacroix/pseuds/Biana_Delacroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's Nancy Drew and they're the Hardy Boys, and together, this is one mystery they just might be able to solve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dream Team

**Author's Note:**

> Written after 4.07 and inspired by the wonderful partnership of Toby and Caleb, with the brief inclusion of Spencer. If I had it my way, they'd all become Private Investigators. 
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters are property of Warner Brothers

“I come bearing gifts!” Toby Cavanaugh backed his way into his loft, his arms laden with Chinese food. He was met with a grateful peck on the lips from his girlfriend and an enthusiastic clap on the shoulder from Caleb, who immediately took the bags and set them down on the coffee table, searching through the cartons.

“Thank God, you have no idea how much I’m starving,” he said, eagerly stuffing a spring roll into his mouth.

“Careful there, no need to rush!” said Spencer with a laugh.

“I’m a growing boy,” Caleb replied, his mouth full of spring rolls.

Spencer just scoffed and went to get some plates from the kitchen. “Do you guys want any coffee, I’m just putting on another pot!” she called out. Toby was behind her in the next second, taking the plates from her hands and guiding her back to the couch.

“Spencer, you’ve had two cups of coffee since you’ve been here, and I don’t want to think about how much you’ve drunk this morning because of everything that’s going on with Hanna, so I am officially cutting you off.”

“She had a Red Bull while you were gone!” yelled Caleb cheerfully, earning him a smack on the back of the head from Spencer as she passed him and sat down.

“Traitor,” she muttered under her breath, while he just grinned back at her.

They ate in silence for a few moments, before Toby noticed how Spencer had stopped eating and was staring into her noodles, her mind a million miles away.

“Something wrong , Spence?” he asked gently.

“What?” she asked, head darting up. “Sorry – uh – I just remembered something that happened a while ago –“

Caleb looked up, “Did somebody stiff you on the Chow Mein because the place on Main Street –“

“I don’t think that’s it,” interrupted Toby, who was back to staring at his girlfriend critically.

Realizing that she was being watched closely by both guys now, Spencer set the carton down on the table carefully and was prepared to make up some lie about being tired before she realized who she was with. Both Toby and Caleb had been lied to repeatedly by herself, her friends, and it was all for nothing. At the end of the day, they had ended up on the A-trail along with the rest of them.

_‘Maybe it’s time to stop lying.’_

She took a breath before she began. “It’s just – the Chinese food, it reminded me of something A – something _Mona –_ did to us a while back.” She winced when they both stiffened, “It wasn’t too bad! She just managed to switch our order of Chinese food with mud and worms.” Actually, thinking back on the incident, it had been pretty funny.

(She missed the days when A just put worms in food instead of bodies in trunks.)

“You know, that wasn’t even the worst of it, she actually hid a message in the fortune cookies.” Spencer knew it was crazy, but she couldn’t help but feel a little impressed. “Personally, I think her best work was when she gave Emily a box of Alpha-Bits with only ‘A’s.”

Toby and Caleb just stared at the brunette, shocked at her nonchalant attitude. “Spencer, did you just joke about your _stalker_?” asked a very confused Caleb.

She just shrugged and gave a small sigh. “I know, I sound more nuts than usual. It’s just…we got used to it, you know? After a while, we knew it wasn’t going to stop, so all we could do was get used to it.” She hid her face in her hands and hummed in contentment when she felt Toby’s strong hand massage her shoulder. It did the trick, and she could feel some of the tension leaving her, so she looked up and gave them a wide smile.

“At least you get why I’m so obsessive about catching ‘A’ now!” she said lightly, and it eased the tension off the guys’ faces.

“Obsessive is putting it mildly,” said Caleb. “I seem to remember finding you snooping in a teacher’s office during a dance.”

“She once spent an entire day going through a dead guy’s things looking for information on the N.A.T club,” added Toby, grinning at the glare Spencer was shooting him.

“Wait, what’s the Nat club?” asked Caleb.

“No, not the ‘nat’ club, the N.A.T club. It stands for ‘Nos Animadverto Totus’, it means ‘We See All’ in Latin,” explained Spencer.

“How many languages do you speak?” muttered Caleb, but Spencer ignored him as she got up and strode over to the large board where the boys had laid out their clues.

“So, is anybody going to fill me in on what this club is?” asked Caleb, still confused.

Toby stood up and cracked his neck, feeling the anger rising at what that ‘club’ had done to Spencer and her friends. “It was basically Ian, Garret and Jason, and they’d make these…’home movies’, I guess you could call them.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“Let’s just say the stars of these movies weren’t exactly aware of their involvement,” said Toby through gritted teeth, shooting a glance at Spencer’s back, noticing how stiff she’d gone.

Caleb blanched, putting two and two together. “Who the _fuck_ lives in this town?!” he asked, disgusted at the thought.

Spencer turned and gave him a grim smile. “If it makes you feel any better, Ian Thomas was the one behind most of it and he’s dead.”

Caleb just shook his head in disbelief. “Hanna never even told me half of this…” he said quietly. He didn’t want to be angry at her, he knew she didn’t deserve it, but still, the thought of all that she had been through strengthened his resolve to help her now, no matter what the risk.

“She didn’t want to worry you,” said Spencer sympathetically. She looked over at Toby and knew that he was remembering everything ‘A’ had done to their relationship, everything she had done to try and protect him, every lie she had told.

_‘Was it worth it in the end?”_

“I told you, Hanna’s tough,” said Toby, he could see how worried they both were. “She’s going to get through this and we’re going to help her, we’re going to figure out who killed Wilden and catch ‘A’, and then – “

“Can we take a vacation after that?” asked Spencer drily. “I’ll gladly offer up the lake house.”

Caleb grinned widely, “I _love_ that lake house.”

Spencer grimaced, “Please, I _do not_ need any details of what you guys did on my Nana’s couch!”

“I’ll give you the details later,” he said in a mock whisper to Toby, who just laughed and flopped down on his couch.

“Great, you guys have a bromance, can we get back to the stalker issue?” asked Spencer, turning back to the board. It was an impressive layout, even by her standards, and she had once recreated Mona’s lair from memory. “How did you two even put this together?”

“I wanted to help Hanna, but she wasn’t about to let me get involved,” explained Caleb. “So I thought, who would be as invested in helping you girls as I was?”

“So he came to see me,” added Toby, “And we put together everything we knew about ‘A’, Mona, that night at the lodge, everything we knew from you and Hanna, everything we thought you might be lying about – and that’s the end result.” He smirked at Spencer’s impressed face. “What do you think Detective Hastings? How do we measure up?”

Spencer grinned at both of them. “We should’ve gotten you guys involved sooner.”

“We _were_ involved – first they thought I killed Alison, and then I joined the ‘A’ team, remember?”

“Hey, I got shot!” said Caleb.

“Ah, but that actually had nothing to do with Ali or the A-team,” said Spencer.

Caleb just rolled his eyes, “Do you want to see the scar, Hastings? Because bullet wounds leave scars!” He tried to sound serious, but ended up laughing, which set off Toby and Spencer. It was probably wrong, they all knew, to sit around and make fun of how fucked up their lives had gotten. But it felt so nice to just _laugh_ that for at least for now, they didn’t care.

“Can you believe all this is happening because of one girl’s murder?” asked Toby, looking over the notes that they had collected. He sat up and moved over on the couch so that Spencer could sit next to him, tucking her feet up under her.

“I think it was much bigger than one girl,” said Spencer pensively. “We had no idea what the hell Ali was doing the summer she died, she was dating mysterious guys, she was blackmailing people for money, she was hiding out in Cape May – we have all these pieces, we just have no idea what the big picture is.”

“I can’t believe you guys were even – “ said Caleb, before stopping abruptly.

“What?” prodded Spencer.

Caleb looked reluctant to continue but the other two just gave him expectant looks so he took a breath. “Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t believe you guys were friends with Alison. I mean, from what I’ve heard, she was massive bitch.”

Spencer frowned, mulling over his question. She darted a look up at Toby, but he was suddenly very interested in one of the cartons on the coffee table and she winced inwardly at where his memories had probably gone. Ali _had_ been a bitch, and being her friend meant going along with her schemes, chief among them being staying quiet while Toby got blamed for Jenna’s accident. He had been branded and ostracized and she had stayed quiet out of pure cowardice. Alison had demanded their total obedience, and in retrospect, she wished she could’ve taken it all back.

Wordlessly, she reached out and squeezed his hand and shot him a soft smile. He knew what she was trying to convey and he smiled back gratefully.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” said Spencer quietly. “I guess…she made us feel important. She made us feel like we were special, one of a kind. She was popular and confident and when we were with her, that’s how we felt too.” She ran her free hand through her hair in frustration. “Look, I know it doesn’t justify some of the things we did, but…she was our friend.”

Toby untangled his hand from Spencer’s and brought his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side. “We get it Spence. Don’t worry, we’ll figure out what happened to her eventually.”

“You know when you think about it, I guess we all sort of owe ‘A’,” said Caleb.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it, if it wasn’t for everything that had happened to her, none of us would ever have really met.”

Spencer frowned, before realizing he was right. If it hadn’t been for ‘A’, she and Toby would’ve never spoken two words to each other. Hanna and Caleb would never have gotten to know each other, and the guys would’ve probably never met. “Huh, go figure. We actually have something to thank ‘A’ for.”

Toby tightened the arm he had around his girlfriend’s shoulders.  “Remember when we were the town pariahs?”

“I’m pretty sure we still might be,” she replied, but it was with a grin. If nothing else, at least she had her safe place to land back. They were both so stressed, the truth about his mother and the strain it was putting on their relationships with everyone around them weighed heavily on her mind, but after the hell she had been through so recently, she was going to hold onto him with everything she had.

He must’ve caught on to what she had been thinking about because he dipped his head and caught her lips in a kiss. It was sweet and warm, something she had missed while they had been off dealing with dead detectives and stolen patient files. She opened her mouth slightly and could feel his tongue darting in before they were both startled by a cushion being thrown in their faces.

“Guys, I’m still here!” whined Caleb, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.

Spencer stuck her tongue out at him childishly and Toby threw the pillow back, both of them laughing. It was so _nice_ to laugh with friends, to be reassured that maybe it was still possible to dig their way out of the abyss and pull all their lives together. They would figure out who killed Wilden and save Hanna’s mom. They would find out the truth about Toby’s mother. And together, they would catch Red Coat, whether she was Alison or not.

Together, they’d figure it all out.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment and let me know what you think!


End file.
